Conan the Defender Read online

  All he said was, “You think your plans should be advanced, then? But why speak to me of it?”

  “No, you don’t understand. Not those plans. Something different. More immediate.” The thin man’s face had a sheen now, from the sweat that covered it, and his voice shook, though he kept it low. “We are to be introduced into the palace, you see. With knives. Garian must die. Immediately. But I cannot. I am not that sort of man. You are a man of violence. Take my place.”

  “I’m no assassin,” Conan growled.

  Leucas yelped, eyes darting frantically. “Keep your voice down,” he almost sobbed. “You don’t understand. You have to—”

  “I understand what you ask,” Conan said coldly. “Ask again and I’ll give you my fist in your teeth.” A sudden thought struck him. “Does Ariane know of this?”

  “You must not tell her. You must not tell anyone. I should never have spoken to you.” Abruptly Leucas stumbled to his feet. Backing away from the table, he made vague and futile gestures. “Consider it, Conan. Will you do that? Just consider it.”

  The Cimmerian made as if to rise, and with a yelp the philosopher scrambled away, almost diving into the street.

  Conan’s mouth twisted angrily. How dare the man consider him so, an assassin, a murderer? He had killed, surely, and likely would again, but because he had to, not because he had been paid to. But more important than his feelings was Ariane. Conan could see no way for a man like Leucas, smelling of fear-sweat, to enter the Royal Palace without being taken. And once given a whiff of hot irons and pincers, the philosopher would babble every name he knew back to his mother. The Cimmerian could escape if worse came to worst, but Ariane would be a fawn in a snare. Would Hordo appear, he decided, they would find Ariane, and he would warn her about Leucas.

  Thinking of Hordo reminded him of his wine. Where could that serving girl be? Nowhere in sight, that was certain. In the entire tavern no one was moving except the dancers and the three Kothians, apparently ambling closer for a better inspection of the wares.

  Conan started to rise to go in search of the girl, and as he did one of the Kothians suddenly shouted at him, “I told you she is my woman, barbar!”

  With practiced moves the three crossed their wrists and drew their forearm daggers. The flutes ceased their play, and the dancers ran screaming as the Kothians plunged at the muscular Cimmerian, a blade in each fist.

  One-handed, Conan heaved his table over to crash before them. “Fools,” he shouted as he sprang to his feet, “you have the wrong man.”

  Two of the Kothians danced aside, but one fell, rolling to his knees before Conan, daggers stabbing. Conan sucked in his belly, and the blades skittered off his jazeraint hauberk, one to either side. Before the attacker could move, Conan’s knee had smashed into his bony chin, splintering teeth in a spray of blood. Even as the man’s blades fell from nerveless hands, and he followed them unconscious to the filthy floor, Conan’s own steel was in his grasp, broadsword and belt dagger held low at the ready.

  “You have the wrong man,” he said again. The remaining two split, gliding in the feline crouch of experienced knife fighters. Noise picked up at the tables as men took wagers on the outcome. “I’ve never seen you before, nor your woman.”

  The two men continued to move, flanking the Cimmerian, blades held low for the thrust that would slip under the overlapping metal plates of his hauberk.

  “You are he,” one said, and when Conan’s eyes flickered to him, the other attacked.

  The Cimmerian had been expecting it, though. Even as his eyes shifted, so had his sword slashed. The attacking Kothian screamed, a fountain of blood where his right hand had been. Desperately clutching the stump of his wrist, the man staggered back, sinking to the floor with the front of his tunic staining deeper red with every spurt.

  Conan spun back to face the third man, but that one was of no mind to continue the business. Dismay writ large on his dark face, he stared at his two fellows on the floor, one senseless and one bleeding to death.

  The big Cimmerian pointed at him with his sword. “Now. You will tell me—”

  Suddenly the door of the tavern was filled with City Guardsmen, a dozen of them, crowding through with swords in hand. The first one pointed at Conan. “There he is!” he shouted. In a mass the Guardsmen surged forward, plowing through onlookers and toppling tables in their haste.

  “Crom!” Conan muttered. They looked to have no mind for asking who had begun the fighting, or why. Springing onto the narrow stage, he dashed for the door the dancers had used. It was latched.

  “Take him!” a Guardsman howled. “Cut him down!” Bursting through the tavern’s patrons—most of whom would gladly have gotten out of the way had they been given a chance—the Guardsmen rushed for the stage.

  Conan took a quick step back and hurled himself against the rough wooden door, smashing through in a shower of splinters. Dancers, shrieking now again, huddled in the narrow passage, at the end of which he saw a doorway letting onto the outside. Hurriedly he forced his way through the scantily clad dancers. At the doorway he paused, then turned, waving his sword overhead, and roared, making the most horrible face he could. Screaming with renewed energy, the dancers stampeded back onto the stage. Shouts of consternation rose as the Guardsmen found themselves caught in a deluge of hysterical female flesh.

  That should hold them, Conan thought. Sheathing his steel he hurried out into an alley behind the tavern. Little wider than his shoulders and twisting like a snake, it smelled of old vomit and human excrement. He chose a direction and started off through the buzzing flies.

  Before he reached the first turning, a shout rose behind him. “There he goes!”

  A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the Guardsmen were pouring into the alley. The gods must have tainted his luck, he thought, to send him the only Guardsmen in Belverus with a mind for duty. Perhaps they did not like women. Shouting and slipping in the filth, the black-cloaked squad rushed after him.

  Conan set out at a run, keeping his balance as best he could, half falling against the walls at every twisting of the alley, his massive shoulders knocking more stucco from the flaking, mildewed buildings. Another alley serpentined across the one he followed; he dodged down it. Still another passage appeared, winding cramped between dark walls, and he turned into that. Behind the curses of his pursuit followed.

  As he ran he realized that he was in a warren, a maze of ancient passages in an area surrounded by more normal roadways. The buildings seemed ready to topple and fill those passages with rubble, for though they had begun long years past with but single stories, as years and needs demanded more room that could not be got by building outward, extra rooms had been constructed atop the roofs, and more atop those, till they resembled nothing so much as haphazard stacks of stuccoed and gray-tiled boxes.

  In such a region, running like a fox before hounds, it would be a matter of luck if he found his way to the outside before his pursuers seized him. And it seemed his luck was sour that day. But there was another option, for one who had been born among the icy crags and cliffs of Cimmeria.

  With a mighty leap he caught the edge of a roof, and swung himself up to lie flat on the slate tiles. The curses and shouts of the Guardsmen came closer, were below him, were moving off.

  “He’s up there!” a man shouted below. “I see his foot!”

  “Erlik’s Bowels and Bladder!” Conan muttered. His luck was not sour. Verily it had rotted.

  As the Guardsmen struggled to climb, the Cimmerian darted across the slates, hoisted himself onto a higher level, scrambled over it and leaped to a lower roof. With a great crack the tiles gave way beneath his feet, and he plummeted into the room below.

  Dazed, Conan struggled to his feet in a welter of broken slate. He was not alone, he realized. In the shadows against the far wall, face obscured, a large man in an expensive cloak of plain blue uttered a startled oath in the accents of the gutter. Another man, short beard circling a face pocked with the
marks of some disease, stared in disbelief at Conan.

  It was the third man, though, a gray cloak pulled over his scarlet tunic, who drew the eye. Hawk-faced and obsidian-eyed, his dark hair slashed at the temples with white, he looked born to command. And now he issued one. “Kill him,” he said.

  Crom, Conan thought, reaching for his sword. Did everyone in Belverus want him dead? The pock-faced man put hand to sword hilt.

  “Down there!” came a shout from above. No muscle moved in the room save a twitching of the pock-faced man’s cheek. “That hole in the roof! A silver piece to the man who first draws blood!”

  Visage dark as death, the hawk-faced man raised a clawed hand, as if he could strike Conan across the breadth of the room. There were thuds above as men dropped to the roof. “No time,” the hawk-faced one snarled.

  Turning, he stalked from the room. The other two vanished behind him.

  Conan had no mind either to greet the Guardsmen or to follow on the heels of those three. His eye lit on a tattered cloth, hung against the wall like a tapestry. As if it hid something. He jerked it aside to reveal a door. That let onto another room, full of dust and empty of else, but from there another door opened into a hall. As Conan closed that one softly behind him, he heard the thumps of men dropping through the hole in the roof.

  For a wonder, after the maze of the alleys, the corridor ran straight to a street, and for its length the Cimmerian saw no one save one aging blowze who cracked a door and gave him a gap-toothed smile of invitation. Shuddering at the thought, he hurried on.

  When he got back to the Thestis, the first person he saw was Hordo, scowling into a mug of wine. He dropped onto a stool across from him.

  “Hordo, did you send a message telling me to meet you at the Sign of the Full Moon?”

  “What? No.” Hordo shook his head without looking up from his mug. “Answer me this, Cimmerian. Do you understand any part of women? I walked in, told Kerin she had the prettiest eyes in Belverus, and she slapped my face and said she supposed I thought her breasts weren’t big enough.” He sighed mournfully. “And she won’t say another word to me.”

  “Mayhap I can illumine your problem,” Conan said, and in a low voice he told of the message purporting to come from the one-eyed man, and what had occurred at the Full Moon.

  Hordo caught the import at once. “Then ‘tis you they’re after. Whoever ‘they’ are. Did the knifemen not take you, the Guardsmen were meant to.”

  “Aye,” Conan said. “When the Guardsmen followed so doggedly, I knew their palms had been crossed with gold. But I still know not who did the crossing.”

  Hordo drew a line through a puddle of spilled wine with a spatulate finger. “Have you thought of leaving Belverus, Conan? We could ride south. Trouble brews in Ophir, too, and there’s no dearth of hiring for Free-Companies. I tell you, this business of someone you know not seeking your death sits ill with me. I knew you should have heeded that blind soothsayer.”

  “You knew … .” Conan shook his head. “An I ride south, Hordo, I lose the company. Some would not leave the gold to be had here, and I have not the gold to pay the rest until we find service in Ophir. Besides, there are things I must attend to here first.”

  “Things? Conan, tell me you’re not involving us in this … this hopeless children’s revolt.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly,” Hordo said hollowly. “Tell me what it is you are doing. Exactly.”

  “Earn a little gold,” Conan replied. “Discover who means to have me dead, and deal with them. Oh, and save Ariane from the headsman’s axe. You don’t want Kerin’s pretty head to fall, do you?”

  “Perhaps not,” the one-eyed man said grudgingly.

  Looking around the room until he spotted Kerin, Conan waved for her to come to the table. She hesitated, then came over stiffly.

  “Is Ariane here?” he asked her. The first part of saving her head was to let her know about Leucas, so she could stop him.

  “She went out,” Kerin said. She looked straight at the big Cimmerian as if Hordo did not exist. “She said she had to arrange a meeting for you.”

  “About that message this forenoon,” Hordo said suddenly.

  Casually Kerin leaned over and tipped his winemug into his lap. He leaped to his feet, cursing, as she left.

  “Beheading’s too good for her,” he growled. “Since we’ve both been abandoned, as it seems, let us go to the Street of Regrets. I know a den of vice so iniquitous that whores blush to hear it mentioned.”

  “Not the Sign of the Full Moon, I trust,” Conan laughed.

  “Never a bit, Cimmerian.” Hordo broke into song in a voice like a jackass in pain. “Oh, I knew a wench from Alcibies, her nipples were like rubies. Her hair was gold, but her rump was cold, and her … .” A sudden, shocked silence had descended on the common room. “You’re not singing, Conan.”

  Laughing, Conan got to his feet, and roaring the truly obscene second verse they marched out to horrified gasps.

  X

  “Are you certain?” Albanus demanded. Golden lamps suspended on chains from the arched ceiling of the marble-columned hall cast shadows on the planes of his face, making him look the wolf he was fiercer cousin to.

  Demetrio bristled sulkily, half at the doubting tone and half for having been made to wait on Albanus in the entry hall. “You wanted Sephana watched,” he muttered. “I had her watched. And I’m certain. Would I have come in the night were I not?”

  “Follow me,” Albanus commanded, speaking as to a servant.

  And he no more noticed the young catamite’s pale lips and clenched fists than he would have those of a servant. Demetrio followed as commanded; that was all that was important. Albanus had slipped already into his persona of king. After all, it was now but a matter of days. His last essential acquisition had been made that very day.

  The dark-eyed lord went directly to the chamber where he so often sported himself with Sularia, but the woman was not there now. He tugged the brocaded bell-pull on the wall in a particular fashion, then went straight to his writing desk.

  “When?” he demanded, uncapping the silver inkpot. Taking quill and parchment before him, he scribbled furiously. “How long have I before she acts?”

  “I was not privy to her planning,” Demetrio answered with asperity. “Is it not enough that she gathers her myrmidons about her this night?”

  “Fool!” Albanus grated.

  With quick movements the hawk-faced lord sprinkled sand across the wet-inked parchment from a silver cellar, then lit the flames beneath a small bronze wax-pot. A slave entered, his short white tunic embroidered at the hem with Albanus’ house-mark. Albanus ignored him, pouring off the sand and folding the parchment, sealing it with a drop of wax and his signet.

  “Had all Sephana’s conspirators come, Demetrios, when your watcher brought word to you?”

  “When the third arrived, he came to me immediately. She would not have three of them together if she did not mean to strike tonight.”

  Cursing, Albanus handed the parchment to the slave. “Put this in the hands of Commander Vegentius within a quarter of a glass. On pain of your life. Go.”

  The slave bowed and all but ran from the room.

  “If all have not yet come,” Albanus said as soon as the slave had gone, “there may yet be time to stop her before she reaches the Palace.” He hurried to the lacquered chest, unlocking it with the key that hung about his neck. “And stop her I will.”

  Demetrio eyed the chest and its contents uneasily. “How? Kill her?”

  “You have not the stuff of kings in you,” Albanus laughed. “There is a subtle art in shaping punishment to fit the crime and the criminal. Now stand aside and be silent.”

  The slender young noble needed no second warning. He buried his nose in his pomander—was it not said that all sorceries had great stenches associated with them?—and wished most fervently that he were elsewhere at that moment.

  Carelessly sweeping a
priceless bowl of Ghirgiz crystal from a table to shatter on the floor, Albanus laid in its place a round silver tray graven with an intricate pattern that pained the eye which tried to follow it. With hurried movements he pushed back the flowing sleeves of his deep blue tunic, opened a vial and traced a portion of that pattern in scarlet liquid, muttering incantations beneath his breath as he did. The liquid followed the precise lines worked in the silver, a closed rubiate intricacy that did not spread or alter.

  A packet containing powdered hair from Sephana’s head—her serving maids had been easily bribed to provide the gleanings of her brush—was emptied into a mortar wrought from the skull of a virgin. Certain other ingredients were minutely measured on burnished golden scales and added to the skull, the mixture then ground by a pestle made of an infant’s thigh bone.

  With this concoction he traced other lines of that scribing on the tray. Powder and liquid each formed a closed figure, yet though no part of one touched the other, some portions of each shape seemed to be within the other. But those portions were not always the same, and the eye that looked on them too long spun with nausea and dizziness.

  For a bare moment Albanus paused, anticipating, savoring. There had been the matter of the droughts, but this was the first time that he had struck so at a human being. The power of it seemed to course through his veins, building like the pleasure of taking a woman. Every instant of prolonging made the pleasure greater. But he knew there was no time.

  Spreading his arms he began to chant in a long-dead tongue, his voice invoking, commanding. Powder and liquid began to glow, and his words became more insistent.

  Demetrio moved back as the arcane syllables pierced his brain, not stopping until he stood against the wall. He understood no single one of them, yet all had meaning in the depths of his soul, and the evil that he cherished there knew itself for a lighted spill beside a dark burning mountain. He would have screamed, but terror had him by the throat; his screams echoed in the sunless caverns of his mind.